


Pointing In A Crooked Line

by CesarioWriter



Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - No Voldemort, Challenge Response, Discord: Bellamione Cult, F/F, Hermione Granger Needs a Hug, Lesbian Bellatrix Black Lestrange, Lesbian Culture, Lesbian Hermione Granger, Wizarding Culture (Harry Potter)
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-12-17
Updated: 2018-12-17
Packaged: 2019-09-21 00:38:22
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,016
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17032959
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/CesarioWriter/pseuds/CesarioWriter
Summary: It's 1997 at Hogwarts and Hermione Granger is close to graduating with no idea what she wants to do with her life. It's 1997 in magical Britain and she's completely, totally, one hundred percent normal and just like every other girl out there. There is nothing different about her whatsoever.Sometimes, when the fear overwhelms her and she forces herself to imagine a tepid life with a suitable boy, she convinces herself she believes that. Sometimes, when she forgets everything she's ever known and exists in a floating sea of memory and sensation, she believes she could be happy.





	Pointing In A Crooked Line

**Author's Note:**

> Written as a response to a challenge on the Bellamione Discord. I told you I'd do it.
> 
> Title and further inspiration from "Closer to Fine" by the Indigo Girls, and living through the 90s.

Saturdays in Hogsmeade were pleasant enough. Though frequently overrun by throngs of laughing, running students, the idyllic village retained a quaint charm that one Hermione Granger, number one student at Hogwarts School of Wizardry, felt quite taken by ever since the first time she trod its cobbled pathways. The twisting, lackadaisical avenues lent their own peculiar endearment, as did the shop fronts that rarely, if ever, changed. Though most of the way through her seventh year, Hermione had yet to truly decide what she wanted to do with her life. Her friends had decided on a great many things - Ron had decided that he simply had to try out for the Chudley Cannons, Harry wanted to try and follow in his father's footsteps and become an Auror, Ginny was already being scouted by multiple professional Quidditch teams, Luna had been helming the Quibbler's writing and editorial staff for a year. Even _Parkinson_ had an internship lined up for summer after their exams. Granted, she'd only secured it through her father's influence, something that Hermione had no hope of ever securing for herself, but the fact remained that even that vapid Posh Spice knock off had a future planned.  
  
And Hermione didn't.  
  
Not that it mattered. She'd done more than enough to cock up her future in the last year, despite her top marks. Or would that be more accurately, because of her high marks? Truly, had she been slightly less inquisitive, a dash more level headed, she might have easily side stepped the quagmire that had ensnared her.   
  
With a sigh, she pushed her way into Tomes and Scrolls, inhaling deeply of the aged parchment and leather scent that embraced her. She smiled at the clerk behind the counter and made her way into the stacks.   
  
Her trainers scuffed across the boards as she passed by recent wizarding fiction before she turned the corner and drew up short. She stepped forward, her hand reaching forward before she shoved her thumb into her pocket, gripping at the rough denim of her jeans to ground her against the decidedly aggro actions she wished to take. Her eyes narrowed as she raked her gaze over the barmy woman holding-  
  
"Put the book down and no one gets hurt."  
  
Dark curls whipped through the air, arcing as a steely gaze snapped to bear on Hermione. "Excuse you? Who do - oh." The harshness of her sharp gaze shifted to an infuriating smirk. Hermione clenched her jaw against the insults that ached to fly from her as the darkened gaze drifted over her body. " _You_."  
  
"Yes. Me." Hermione deliberately unclenched her fingers and extended them toward the bane of her existence, scion of the Most Ancient and Noble House of Black, Bellatrix Black. Bellatrix Black, who was currently holding the _one_ book that Hermione had wanted to pick up. "Hand it over."  
  
Bellatrix laughed softly, her head tilted slightly as that infuriating smirk continued to mock Hermione from that irritatingly distracting face. "Like you could make me."  
  
"Make you?" Hermione gave a short, sharp laugh. The very _idea_. "Why should I need to make you? What need do you have for a muggle lesbian romance novel?" Hermione couldn't help the smugness, the dripping sarcasm and judgement from her every syllable. As though Bellatrix would truly-  
  
"Oh, is that what this is?" Bellatrix ran her fingers across the title, tracing the letters with rapt attention. Hermione hated how helpless she was against her eyes following the progress of those fingers, drinking in the sight of those sweetly remembered- "Curious. I suppose I could broaden my horizons." Bellatrix raised her darkened gaze from the book, her eyes deliberately, slowly, tracing up the length of Hermione's body. Her voice dropped to a husky purr that sent a shiver along Hermione's spine. "Take in new sights."  
  
"...have you been imperiused?" There was nothing else for it. Some how, some way, this woman before her had to have been hit with an Unforgivable. Shame, really, that a fine mind like that should go.  
  
Bellatrix gave a short laugh. "Cute." She turned her attention to the shelf before her, her fingers brushing across the spines of the books. Hermione forcibly bit her tongue as Bellatrix flicked a finger across one protruding book, an unbidden memory flashing through her senses. "You seem to know about these lesbian romance novels." Bellatrix turned her head, arresting Hermione with a steady, calm look. "Bet the ginger appreciates that. His sort do."   
  
The sudden bristle of anger rushed through Hermione and she stepped forward, her voice dropping to a menacing growl. "His _sort_?!"  
  
"Heterosexual men." Bellatrix grinned, and the distance between them seemed to disappear with the focus of her attention narrowed to Hermione and Hermione alone. The attention should have been suffocating. Instead, Hermione drew a breath like she'd just remembered what it meant to inhale. It was surely her imagination that Bellatrix was glancing at her lips. She must surely have been looking at the bruise on Hermione's chin from when the first year potions class she'd been proctoring had exploded three cauldrons. "What did you think I meant, precious?"  
  
"That is irrelevant." Hermione had been certain that her voice would be firm, strong in her conviction to retrieve the book. This conviction was, regrettably short-lived as soon as her voice sounded, a tremble suffusing the syllables that were supposed to be demanding. "Hand over the book."  
  
Bellatrix stepped forward, her body close enough for Hermione to feel the heat in the space between them. "Mm. No, I don't believe I will." Hermione stepped back, shifting until she was pressed against the bookshelf in an attempt to create space between them, desperately hoping both that the clerk would and would not appear around the corner to investigate what they were doing. She couldn't decide which would be more mortifying - being discovered cornered like a bloody git by Bellatrix Black, or allowing this encounter to continue unimpeded. She swallowed as Bellatrix stepped into her, one hand still holding the book, the other raising to trace over the books just by Hermione's shoulder. "In fact, I would prefer to grab every one of these lesbian romance novels and see what it is that is that brings such color to those innocent little cheeks you have." She was trapped within the force of this woman's presence but that did not mean that Hermione would bow to her whim. She couldn't. Her gaze hardened and her lips pressed together in a thinning line. Bellatrix laughed softly, leaning in so every syllable was murmured mere inches away from Hermione's mouth. "Glaring doesn't negate your blush..." Bellatrix raised her hand, the backs of her fingers brushing lightly against Hermione's arm before gentle fingertips pressed lightly against Hermione's throat. "Or that racing heartbeat."  
  
"S-step back." The soft whisper sounded between them, the hint of a tremble now present in full.  
  
A cheeky grin met Hermione's protestation, and Bellatrix traced her fingers lightly along the line of Hermione's neck. "Or what? You'll hex me?"  
  
"Yes." Finally. A firm word. Hermione was proud of herself.  
  
"Mm. I don't think you will." Bellatrix lowered her hand, her fingers brushing against the soft cotton of Hermione's shirt. Her head tilted slightly and those dark, fathomless eyes looked to be tracing along the curve of Hermione's lip as she bit it briefly.  
  
"Don't..." A quiet plea in the air between them, tinged with desperation. Hermione could not tell which emotion rode stronger: the desperation for Bellatrix to go further, or for her to leave.  
  
Bellatrix leaned back, her smirk back in full force. "I'm not doing anything but standing near you, poppet."  
  
The last time Hermione had heard that name, it had been softly spoken in her ear, before those full lips had pressed gentle kisses along the column of her exposed throat.   
  
Feelings she could not have. Would not have. Hermione closed her eyes, her voice returning to the quiet plea. "Stop calling me those names." She ached to hear them, but could not accept what it meant, for her, for her future- "I have a name."  
  
"And how well I know it." Bellatrix leaned in again, finally pressing her body fully against Hermione's and trapping them against the bookshelf. The shelves dug into Hermione's back painfully and she ignored them, her attention rapt on the woman before her. It wouldn't really start hurting for at least a few minutes. Unless Bellatrix did something to- "Or was it my imagination that you had me screaming it the other night when you were supposed to be revising for your entrance exam?"   
  
Unbidden, the exact memory flooded back into Hermione's mind, of the soft, responsive feel of Bellatrix beneath her, how she could feel every twinge and tremble of the clit beneath her tongue, how Bellatrix had tangled her hands in Hermione's hair and screamed and screamed-  
  
"We-"  
  
"Yes, I know." Bellatrix stepped back abruptly, her gaze cooling to the affected imperiousness so prevalent amongst purebloods and the upper classes. Hermione hated it with every fibre of her being, a clawing desperation sparking to life in her chest to see yet again this woman before her undone and raw by Hermione's touch. "It didn't happen." Hermione's hands trembled, memories of how the curves of the svelte and toned body, honed by her regular workouts, felt beneath Hermione's unseasoned touch. The stamina of the woman was enough to weaken Hermione's knees at the mere memory. "It can't happen." Her fingers flexed against the memory of Bellatrix squeezing, clasped tightly around Hermione as soft cries had filled the third bedroom to the right in the Eastern Wing of Black Manor. "You're not like that." The supernovae that had filled Hermione's existence as Bellatrix had flipped her and returned the favor, incessantly, until Hermione had weakly begged for respite. "You will never be like that." The first time she spotted the luscious woman before her, laughing and joking with her sister on a Hogsmeade weekend, before their eyes had met across the room. How she'd followed Bellatrix, lost and scared in her own mind, desperate to find a resolution, to find answers to these new feelings. "It was a mistake."   
  
Hermione bristled, pushing herself away from the bookshelf and toward the cold woman before her. "That's not-"  
  
"Here." Bellatrix shoved the book into Hermione's chest, forcing her to grab at the book lest it fall to the ground. She looked down at the tome before meeting the chilled gaze that skewered her. "Maybe they'll have a happier go of it than we did." Bellatrix stepped past Hermione, not deigning to look at her any longer.  
  
"I-"  
  
Bellatrix stopped, and Hermione's words died on her tongue as the beautiful profile that haunted her turned just far enough to allow her a final glimpse. "Goodbye, love. You know where to find me...if you ever work up the courage."  
  
Without a further word, Bellatrix swept out of Hermione's view. A quiet murmur of voices followed by the soft tinkle of the bell over the door indicated that the woman had indeed left.   
  
Hermione blinked, the swirl of emotions within her chest overwhelming her good sense. She looked down at the book in her hands, her eyes tracing over the title mindlessly. Her breath hitched in her throat and she stared as tears threatened to prickle at her eyes.   
  
She inhaled deeply and shoved the tears aside, dashing her fingers roughly across her eyes. All was not lost. Bellatrix had extended an invitation. Perhaps she could salvage this, if she had the courage. She could continue as she had been, gutted by the loss, or she could stand up and admit she was arse over tits for Bellatrix Black.  
  
All she had to do was accept.  
  
Hermione straightened her shoulders and shoved the book back into its place on the shelf. For once, answers would not be found in the pages of a book held in her hands. The answers she needed were written in the heart of one Bellatrix Black.  
  
And Hermione was bound and determined to know them. 


End file.
